


now you bring me your bruises (the writing our history remix)

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Darwin is Alive, F/F, Gen, M/M, Past Abuse, Remix, Scars, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven is fascinated by the scars of her friends and the history they carry on their bodies. Maybe if her history was so clear to see, it wouldn't be so difficult for her to process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now you bring me your bruises (the writing our history remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/gifts).
  * Inspired by [now you bring me your bruises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/368699) by [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust). 



> Thanks to [redacted] for looking this over and **littledust** for being so great ♥

Raven doesn't scar.

She's been hurt plenty of times, kicked around by the people who were supposed to be her parents after her mother died, by the people who found her sneaking through their houses, by the people who found her sleeping on the streets on nights she didn't hide herself well enough. She's been on her own for three years now, since her new parents rejected her when she was five, and it was awful enough that she didn't hesitate to stay when Charles asked, wary as she was.

None of the marks stick around, though. Even the really bad ones, the ones that bled and bled, they heal up into nothing after only a day or so.

She likes to give herself scars, sometimes. Now that she has a roof over her head and a kitchen full of food and a closet full of pretty dresses and a brother who loves her, now that she can take time to play with her disguises, she twists her skin into scars and marks and looks at them in the mirror. They're strange to see, but they don't stick around, and the second she stops thinking about them, her pink skin is smooth again.

She doesn't show them to Charles. Charles does have scars--lots of them, on his neck and his back and his arms and his legs. Some of them are tiny and he insists he'll grow out of most of them, but they're gruesome, too, if only because she knows where they came from.

On the nights when Kurt is drunk or Cain is angry, Raven helps him clean them up and bandage them with clean, white gauze. She tells him made up stories and pretends she doesn't see him crying.

She doesn't mention her fascination with scars to him. Not at eight or twelve or even at seventeen, when they discover that the world is much bigger than they had previously imagined it could be.

*

Hank wears his shoes almost all the time, even once Angel and her tattoos and Darwin and his propensity for doing weird things with his skin become part of their little group. 

("What do you call a group of mutants?" Angel asks on a rare morning when Charles and Erik are on site and eating breakfast with them. 

"I'm not an expert on nomenclature but--a cluster?" Hank suggests.

"A school," Charles says firmly.

"A headache," Erik murmurs under his breath, just for Raven's ears, and she has to hold back a giggle.)

"Let 'em loose, man," Darwin says to Hank one day. "No one cares."

"I'm still technically working here," Hank says, pushing his glasses up and looking at the floor. "There's a dress code."

Darwin doesn't press, because Darwin's cool like that, but Raven can tell that's not the whole reason.

She catches him later, in his lab, shoes abandoned under his desk in deference to the summer heat. He's leaning over a microscope and Raven approaches quietly so as not to startle him. She looks specifically at his feet--she's good at studying people and can usually replicate outward appearances almost perfectly after only a few minutes. She's not gotten a good look at Hank's feet yet, though, and she wants a chance to study them before he gets self-conscious and covers them up.

They're not that bad, really. At least, not compared to what she looks like when she's not covered up. Big, yeah, but when his toes are together, you almost can't tell there's anything different about them.

Except there are a series of tiny white gouges around the base of the big toe on his left foot. The skin is shiny and smooth and she gasps before she can help herself. The noise gives her away and Hank sits up straight and knocks over a beaker of something, then curses.

"It's okay!" he says. "It was inert. I just--uh, you startled me."

She doesn't miss the way he readjusts his stance so his feet are under the base of his rolling chair.

"Hank, did you try to...to amputate your toe?" she asks, eyes still wide from the revelation.

"I--" Hank starts to say, and then sighs. He looks away from her and pushes the chair back from the desk so he can lean down and collect his shoes. "I was young," he says as he slips his socks back on. He still won't look at her. "I didn't want to be a freak anymore. It was the first week of secondary school and we were forced to change for gym class. My parents took me out of school and put me into private tutoring afterwards, but not before I bled all over the bathroom floor trying to--well, I think that's obvious."

The shoes are next, one after the other, tied tightly and neatly before Hank puts his feet back on the floor and looks at her again.

"Uh, I--I couldn't do it," he says. "I couldn't go through with it. Sometimes I wish I had, but I do appreciate the extra agility at times, and I've never tried again, so maybe I don't hate them as much as I hate the way people look at them." 

A long moment passes between them, silent and tense and filled with things Raven doesn't know how to say. For all that her blue scales and yellow eyes are freakish, she'd never be able to--

She shudders, just thinking about it.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to any of the others," Hank says to her, rubbing the back of his neck. "I just--I don't really like to talk about it."

"I won't," Raven promises, but that night, as she flips through the personas of her new friends in front of the mirror, she lingers, staring at the scarring on Hank's foot and wondering what it feels like to live with the constant reminder of that moment of weakness.

*

Sean has a scar on his shoulder the size of a nickel and jagged around the edges. Raven sees it one day when they're playing basketball in the gym and asks about it when the game is over.

"Oh man," he says. "You will not even believe this story."

The story is fifteen minutes long and filled with increasingly improbable antics and more swooning women than Raven (or any sane person) can believe. The morsel of truth embedded within it seems to be that Sean and some friends were screwing around on the roof of their school and Sean fell onto a bit of exposed piping.

Angel meets her eyes as Sean finishes his yarn and rolls her eyes. Raven smirks in response. She likes Angel. She's a little intimidated by how cool and confident Angel is, how mature, but she thinks they're maybe becoming friends. It might be circumstance more than anything--ever since Alex showed up, Darwin's been following him like a shadow, Hank's working a lot, and Sean is pretty annoying, but Raven's glad for it, no matter what the circumstances.

"How about you?" Sean asks, catching the end of their visual exchange. "You got any cool scars?" His eyes drift to the scar on Angel's forearm. Raven's noticed it too, but she doesn't think they're close enough for her to ask yet.

"None that are any of your business," Angel says sweetly, and the others laugh. Sean turns his attention on Alex, who's wiping the sweat from his brow with his discarded t-shirt. He, too, as a few thin white scars on his forearms.

"Summers?" Sean asks.

"They're not cool," he says. He rubs his forearm, almost absently. "A kid in a group home came after my little brother. I got between them. Hurt like a bitch, but that kid never touched him again." His expression is fierce, protective, sharp, and Raven thinks suddenly of Charles, who shooed away bullies with a touch to his temple and a wave of his hand. Raven hated it, hated not being able to fight her own battles, but she thinks of Alex and his scars and the scars on Charles' back and the times he stepped between her and Cain. 

She thinks she'll hug him the next time she sees him, just because she's missed him.

"Well, I can't scar at all," Darwin says, smoothly taking the spotlight off of Alex. "My skin adapts too quickly. It's great when I cut myself shaving, though."

"Me too," Raven means. "I mean, I don't scar, not that I cut myself shaving. I don't even have to."

"Lucky," Angel says.

"I don't know," Darwin says. "Scars tell stories. They have a history. Sometimes it's good to be reminded of that. Sometimes you need that connection to something to remember where you've been and how far you've come."

Darwin looks at Alex for a long moment steeped in the kind of meaning that Raven can see every time her brother looks at Erik. Then, he looks at her. This is a different sort of look, one that Raven recognizes from the mirror. Raven's not the only one who wishes her triumphs and failures could leave some trace.

"Come on," Sean says, "let's go for round two." He bounces the ball at Alex and, just like that, they're back in their game, though Raven's mind is elsewhere until long after it's finished.

*

Shaw reminds them all that emotional scars can be just as terrible as physical ones not long after their basketball game. Luckily, Darwin and Alex's quick thinking gets them all out of the fight in-tact, despite Angel's brief defection.

Raven can hardly bear to look at her. She has to remind herself, again and again, that there are different kinds of pain, different kinds of lives, and it's possible the maturity she's coveted all these months came at a high cost. Still, she had liked Angel. She had--

It doesn't matter, though, because Angel stayed. At the end of the fight, even after stepping over to Shaw's side, Angel decided to stay and Charles, Erik, and Agent MacTaggert returned from Russia hours afterwards and in no time they were headed back to Westchester.

Raven honestly never thought Charles would be able to stomach coming back here.

He seems...different, though. Happier. Lighter. It's a weird change when she thinks about how they're facing a war, but then she sees how he looks at Erik and it starts to make sense. She doesn't know if he's acted on it at first--Charles falls in love twenty times a day and gets over it just as quickly, but this has been brewing for months now and if he hasn't already moved on, then it's definitely serious. Whether it's an ongoing affair or just Charles being too frightened to act on it is another matter entirely. She has plans to ask him, but he upsets them entirely by telling her himself. Sort of.

He's dashing around after a run, trying to get ready for dinner and also making notes on something in his study and also having a loud, shouted conversation about chess and history with Erik, none of that would be _odd_ except that he's not wearing a shirt while he does it.

Charles always wears at least a t-shirt. It hides the worst of the scars on his back. But he hardly seems to notice they're on display as he rolls his eyes at Raven, shouting, "You're so very, very wrong about that, my friend," to Erik, who's leaning against the open door to his bedroom.

"We'll see about that," Erik says, raises his eyebrows, and retreats to his room.

Charles' eyes linger on the doorway and Raven hisses, "Charles! You're not wearing a shirt!"

"What?" Charles asks, distant, and then, "Oh, I'm sorry, darling, I was miles away. What was that?"

"You're just walking around shirtless," she repeats, quieter. "Where anyone--where Erik--"

Charles stares at her in confusion for a moment before understanding lights his eyes. He glances back at the closed door again and then reaches to touch his back.

"This isn't the first time Erik has seen my scars," Charles says, his voice gentle in a way she hasn't heard it in years. It's the voice he used to use to soothe her nightmares. "He understands--he has scars of his own."

Unbidden, emotion wells in Raven's throat. She's ten years old again, stoically holding a pilfered icepack to Charles' black eye, twelve and and disinfecting his cuts, all the while pretending she's not crying so someone in the damn house can be strong enough to allow Charles a moment of weakness. Charles must sense it, because his arms are around her before she can even step forward to hug him and they must look a sight, weeping and holding each other in the middle of the hall.

They're late to dinner, but no one seems to notice except Erik, whose eyes snap to Charles once they enter the room and don't leave again until Charles nods at him. Raven isn't even sure if their silent conversation is actually telepathic. Something relaxes in Erik at Charles' nod--he no longer looks like he's about to spring into action, and he eats his dinner without remarking further. 

It's not until after dinner and clean-up and the start of a board game that Raven sees him again. She's off in the back of the house trying to find a deck of cards when she sees the light on the pool deck. The only people missing from their game night are the supposed adults--Charles, Moira, and Erik--and she wanders out curiously. 

It's Erik in the water, swimming methodical laps from one end of the pool to the other. He doesn't seem to notice her--if he does, he doesn't indicate it in any way. She thinks he's almost robotic like this, the way his strokes are perfectly measured, the way he flips at the end and returns to the other side without faltering. Raven watches him make five full rotations. At the end of the fifth, he doesn't flip at the wall, but stops and swims in place for a moment.

He looks up at Raven, raises his eyebrows, and then swims to the ladder and climbs out of the pool.

Raven looks because--hell, Erik is hot. Really hot. She's had a little crush on him for months, and she doesn't blame Charles for making a move. He's especially hot soaking wet wearing nothing but swimming trunks, but that's not what catches her eye.

Charles was right; Erik has scars of his own.

"Was that all...Shaw?" she asks, then immediately regrets it. That's a Charles move--saying something impulsive and stupid and insulting and painful and being utterly unable to take it back and having to live with your embarrassment until the other person puts you out of your misery or pretends they haven't heard you.

Erik, of course, doesn't play that kind of game.

"Tangentially, not that it's any of your business," he says. He stalks past her and picks up a towel from the chair to scrub his hair dry. Up close, Raven can see even more scars, some too small and too thin to be seen from far away. "Some were Shaw, some were the camp in general, some were the search for Shaw afterwards."

The scars disappear as he wraps the towel around his shoulders to dry his back. Raven forces herself to look away and into Erik's cool, calculating eyes.

"Charles, uh--" She was going to say, _Charles said you had scars,_ but she doesn't think either Erik or Charles would appreciate that, so she keeps her mouth shut.

"Charles," Erik says, raising his eyebrows. "Do you interrogate Charles about his scars as well?"

She thinks the comment is meant to shame her, but instead it makes her angry. What does he know about Charles? He's been here for what--four months? Five? Just because he's sleeping with Charles doesn't mean he gets to write off her entire history of taking care of him. 

"No," she snaps, "because I was there when he got those scars. I'm making sure he's not going to get any more."

She means because Erik has pulled Charles into the fight against Shaw, but Erik's expression darkens and Raven realizes that's not how he interpreted it.

She opens her mouth to apologize, but shuts it just as quickly. Let Erik think what he'd like. She doesn't want Erik hurting Charles either. She stares at him, daring him to question her. Something about his expression changes. Instead of glaring at her or blowing her off, he looks...assessing. 

"I'm not going to hurt your brother," he says. Then, "Excuse me."

He leaves without wrapping the towel around his shoulders. His history is standing out in stark relief against his skin, proof of where he's come from and what he's been. 

Raven rubs her arm--soft and pink or scaley and blue, her skin is always a mystery. A lie, a secret, but never a story.

She finds the deck of cards and returns to the others, but begs off with a headache and goes to bed.

*

Raven sleeps poorly and, when Charles invites her to come on a run with him and the boys, she declines, claiming she has some chores to catch up on. Instead, she finds herself wandering from room to room and thinking about her life growing up in the house with Charles. She resents Charles, sometimes. She resents him for many reasons--for the way he treats her like a kid, for the way his mutation is invisible, for the way he grew up with so much excess while she spent two years on the streets, for the way he so casually was able to fall into a relationship with someone who accepted all of him, and even, shamefully, for the way he always caught the attention of their parents and Cain. She hates admitting that, hates feeling it, but it's so much easier to show someone the mark from a belt buckle and say "my stepfather did that" than it is to explain the complicated web of pain and shame and fear that came from living in the house, seeing it all happen, but being ignored.

She resents Charles for protecting her as much as she loves him for it. It's something she'll never tell him, and she hopes he never finds out.

She's sitting on the couch in one of the libraries, the one on the second floor that looks out over the rose garden, when Angel finds her.

"Hey," Angel says.

Things have been strange since the CIA fiasco. Darwin's been the only one getting close to Angel, though Raven's tried her hardest to push past the betrayal and reclaim whatever it was they had, the admiration Raven felt for her that bordered on something else.

"Hi," Raven says. She offers Angel a smile and Angel smiles back and she guesses that's a start. 

"Do you mind if I...?" She gestures towards the two couches. She's holding one of the books Charles gave them, the background reading he insists they all complete to better understand the genetic quirks that make them who they are.

"Go ahead," Raven says. She doesn't expect Angel to join her on the couch, but she does, and cracks open her book. Raven tries to go back to staring out the window, but her eyes keep straying back to Angel. She never can look away from other people. She's always studying them, learning their quirks, so as best to imitate them. Charles thinks it might be instinctive or it might be something she learned as a child, after she lost her parents.

She studies Angel now, her posture, her expression, and the scar on her arm, the one she doesn't like to talk about. It's lighter than her other skin, five jagged lines puckered around the edges. She wonders about it, the way she wonders about everyone's scars, but she hasn't asked.

"It was some jackass with a broken beer bottle," Angel says, without looking up from her book. Raven tries to formulate a reply, an apology, but before she can say anything, Angel catches her lip between her teeth and closes her book. She looks up, but not at Raven. "It was my father. That was the only time I tried to save my mama."

The air goes out of Raven's lungs. Her chest hurts and she thinks of a million things she can say, but none of them sound right. This is Angel reaching out. This is Angel trying to apologize, maybe.

"I'm sorry," she says, though it sound stupid. She wants to say she understands, but how does she quantify her experience? She doesn't have scars. She doesn't even have stories. She has a brother who never stopped trying to save her, who still hasn't. "My stepfather was a violent man," she finally says. "He didn't hurt me, but--" Something like recognition flashes in Angel's eyes and she looks first to Raven and then to the window. They can't see the boys from here, but, somehow, Raven knows that's where Angel is looking. "You're brave," she adds. 

Raven isn't. She never has been, for all her bravado.

Something of it must show on her face, because when Angel looks at her, her face is composed of shared heartbreak.

"Baby," she says, fingers brushing Raven's blue skin, scaly and tough and anything Raven wants to be, but never what she needs it to be--a story, an identity, a legacy. "The world has got it out for us."

Raven's heart is beating double-time. The only other person who has touched her true skin is Charles, and this touch is so, so different.

"Yeah," Raven says, "but it's hard to own it when I can't even carry it with me, not where anyone can see." She swallows around the lump in her throat. 

"It's not about where we've been," Angel says. She's still stroking Raven's arm. "It's about making sure we'll never be there again." She looks down at Raven's arm, and says, quietly, "I screwed up. You get used to looking out for yourself. I couldn't remember what it was like to have people who had my back."

"We do," Raven manages to say. "We will. We won't let you end up back there, not as long as you're watching out for us, too." Heart pounding, she leans over and presses a kiss to the scar on Angel's arm, the raised lines smooth under her lips. "And screw anyone who tries to get in our way."

Angel tilts up Raven's chin. "I like the sound of that," she murmurs, leaning forward, and then they're kissing, lips pressed together, mouths moving, and Raven puts the past--history and scars--out of her mind. She's much more invested, suddenly, in the present.


End file.
